


As We've Always Done

by RunawayKotaro



Category: Gintama
Genre: Basically my place to throw everything i didn't want to expand into a full fic, Gen, Lots of Joui 3 content, M/M, The earlier chapters are really just Gen content so
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-03
Updated: 2019-02-25
Packaged: 2019-10-03 19:00:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 5,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17289611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RunawayKotaro/pseuds/RunawayKotaro
Summary: A mostly chronological collection of GinZura drabbles.





	1. Gone

Gintoki tilts his head. He’s there again, the boy with the long hair. He’s there every day that the midget comes to challenge him, but he never comes in, never calls out. Gintoki has seen him watching the matches when the dojo doors are open, his face tense with something Gintoki couldn’t pinpoint.

  
Their eyes meet across the courtyard, and the long haired boy turns and hurries away. He would have left soon anyway.

  
He hears his teacher walk up behind him. “Oi, sensei. What’s up with that kid?”

  
“What do you mean, Gintoki?”

  
He sticks his finger up his nose and stares at the tree the boy disappeared behind. He sees the midget leaving the dojo through the front gate and heading the same way.

  
“He’s always waiting around the gate. It’s creepy.” Gintoki says.

  
“Hmm. Who knows? Perhaps he is concerned about his friend. Or curious as to why Takasugi-kun keeps coming back.” Gintoki can hear Shoyou-sensei’s benign smile. “Perhaps you should ask him.”

  
Shouyou-sensei walks away, near soundlessly. Gintoki pulls his finger out of his nose and contemplates the gate out front. Curious… Concerned for a friend. Was that the tension between his brows and the frown pulling down his features? Was that why he waited outside of the gate for the midget everyday, waiting for him to be bandaged up?

  
Gintoki didn’t ask him like Shoyou suggested. He just watched the long haired boy watch them every day for another week.


	2. Hate

Katsura hates the stillness of his newly empty house. Even the dust motes in the air seem frozen without his Grandmother’s shuffling gait to disturb them. Nothing moves- when he flips the page of his book, the paper crackles like a stiff joint.

Katsura moves to combat the stillness, doing practice swings outside or at the dojo, cleaning, studying, rolling onigiri after onigiri.


	3. Love

That long-haired kid is there again. He shows up and does drills in the corner, or talks to Takasugi, or passes out rice-balls. He really seems to like rice-balls.

He’s rolling one now, for whatever goddamn reason. Gintoki inclines his head to look at him and feels the solid contact of a practice sword with his arm.

“Ippon!”

Dammit, he was distracted.

Takasugi puffs up triumphantly, and Gintoki can tell he’s fighting off a smug smile, the insufferable midget. Gintoki throws down his sword and stomps off.

He stops in front of the long haired kid and points to the rice-ball. “Give me that. It cost me the match.”

The kid looks up from where he kneels, his face set in mild confusion. “What?”

“That rice-ball cost me the match.” Gintoki states. “Give it to me.”

“It’s my last one,” He says, mildly defensive. His face switches to contemplative. “I’ll share it with you if you want though. I tried putting red bean paste in it.”

Gintoki plops down onto the dojo floor and holds out his hand. The other boy breaks the rice-ball in half. Rice granules smeared with red paste crumble away from the mangled mass and stick to his hands. He sets one piece in Gintoki’s hand and keeps the other for himself.

The long haired kid- what was it? Zura?- takes a tentative bite of the mess. Gintoki shoves it in his mouth- no point trying to be neat when it’s already mangled.

Zura gags out a muffled “Too sweet!” at the same time as Gintoki feels stars in his eyes. 

Gintoki stares at the leftover rice on his palm. “I think I’m in love.”


	4. Need

The first time he speaks to Katsura, the other boy is shoving an onigiri at Gintoki’s face with a nervous smile. His voice is strained, his hair is neatly tied, and his eyes, big and brown, are scrunched up in a hopeful wince, like he’s not really sure how smiling is supposed to be done. Gintoki’s too distracted by Takasugi’s win (that damned midget) to consider the newcomer with anything other than confusion and indignation.

The second, and third, and fourth times he speaks to Katsura, Gintoki isn’t inspired to think of him as anything but a weirdo. The long haired boy is down-to-earth and air-headed at the same time. He’s calm, usually, and reasonable, and doesn’t raise his voice. And he’s always rolling those damn onigiri-

Gintoki, little by little, starts to pay more attention.

Katsura is always working alone. He arrives with Takasugi everyday and greets Shoyou-sensei before grabbing a shinai and beginning to practice. Gintoki thinks he seems kind of stuck up, but when the other children tease him (for his dumb hair, for his seeming lack of friends, for how he takes on a teacher’s tone and lectures the ducks that sometimes nest outside the Shouka Sonjuku) he doesn’t respond to the insult, just blinks silently in acknowledgement and turns back to his task. It starts to nag at Gintoki like a particularly obnoxious mosquito bite on the back of his neck- his politeness, how he just blinks his acknowledgement when Gintoki talks to him, how he never speaks more than a sentence at a time to anyone but Sensei and Takasugi.

“Zura. Zura. Oi, Zura.” Gintoki stops in front of the black haired boy, resting his shinai on his shoulder. Katsura tilts his head to look at him, squinting at him questioningly. “Hey, want to try fighting me for once?”

“Who the heck is Zura?” He asks, his questioning squint morphing into an irritated glare.

“You, obviously,” Gintoki intones. “It’s too much effort to call you ‘Katsura.’”

“It’s just adding the ‘Ka!’” He points at Gintoki, lowering his shinai. “Say people’s names right!”

Zura’s irritated, not quite yelling but as close as Gintoki has heard him get. It feels significant.

“Whatever. Just fight me.” Gintoki gestures over his shoulder at Takasugi, standing behind him with his arms crossed. “I’m sick of fighting that idiot. It’s obvious I’m going to win.”

“It’s fifty seven to fifty six,” Takasugi protests. “I’m winning.”

Of course the nosy bastard was listening in. Gintoki ignores him and turns back to Zura, but Takasugi keeps talking.

“Besides, it’s no use inviting him.” Takasugi looks up. “All he says is that ‘a general shouldn’t sully his name with personal battles.’”

“That’s right.” Zura closes his eyes and nods serenely. He looks he’s closing off, on the verge of returning to practice swings, back to solemn silence and only half acknowledging Gintoki’s existence.

“Then I’ll be this general, so you don’t have to.”

“What?” Zura whips his head towards Gintoki like he just said he was the buddha reincarnated, and that, also, feels significant to Gintoki. So he says it again.

“It’s because of this general thing that you can’t do what you want, right?” Gintoki points at Zura, studies the way his jaw drops how he’s staring at Gintoki now, transfixed, “So when I’m around I’ll be your general. So when you’re with me, you just be Zura.”

“Wh-what are you say-”

“So now you can have all the personal battles you want.” And the way that Zura is staring at him, the way his brown eyes go wide and cling to Gintoki makes his stomach feel tight and his feet feel jittery so he turns around. He looks at Takasugi, who’s hovering, frowning, by the wall. “And when you’re around, you do it.”

“Oi, don’t just assign it to someone else!” Takasugi snaps, and swings at Gintoki, and Gintoki blocks and they bicker because that’s what they do, it’s what they always do- but there’s something new, because Zura says, “Draw your sword, and I’ll show you who’s really worthy of being general.”

And Zura smiles, and it’s not the strained, squinty smile he had when he held out an onigiri to Gintoki when they first met. It’s smug and it’s small, but it’s real and it’s comfortable, and Gintoki feels like he’s already won even though they haven’t even started to spar.


	5. Forgive

It was hard to beat Gintoki. Part of it was skill and strength and speed- Takasugi would admit it- but part of it was just that he fought dirty. If he lost his sword he’d use his fists, he’d trip and push and kick- and bite. Takasugi knows from experience.

(“Fight dirty?” Gintoki stared at him, eyes half-open, shinai raised, “If it’s worth fighting over it’s worth doing whatever you can to win.”)

He’s sparring with Zura. The two of them circle in a hack-parry-hack-parry dance.

Zura slides out of the way as Gintoki lunges, and Gintoki spins to catch Zura’s responding slash. Zura steps back, keeping their swords crossed, and Gintoki steps into it, pressing his strength advantage. Takasugi can hear their feet on the wooden floor, light and sure, from where he stands. He watches as Zura sidesteps, sticking out a quick, bare foot right into Gintoki’s path.

Zura wasn’t much of a clean fighter either since they’d started attending the Shouka Sonjuku.

Gintoki’s foot catches on Katsura’s ankle. For a moment he wobbles like a mostly finished jenga tower- then he topples.

“OI!” Gintoki yells as he flings his arms out, throwing his shinai to the side. His hand thwacks into Katsura’s chest and his fingers clench, clasping onto the neckline of Zura’s kimono like his life depends on it.

Gintoki and Zura fall to the ground like two garbage bags full of bricks.

“Hey!” Katsura’s elbow hits the tatami mats with a painful sounding thud. He tries to pull his collar out of Gintoki’s hand. “What kind of samurai are you, dragging others down with you when you fall?!”

“What kind of samurai are you, tripping them in the first place?!” Gintoki struggles to a kneeling position. He crashes his fist into Katsura’s shoulder.

Takasugi abandons the pretense of doing practice swings and watches Gintoki and Zura wrestle, grudgingly amused.

Using his palm to push Gintoki’s face away- the perm makes an indignant noise- Zura squirms into a half sitting position, braced on his elbow. “You were the one who ran into my foot-”

“Yeah?! Who put your foot there?!” Gintoki pulls back his arm to punch again. His face slips off Zura’s hand and he rocks forward, knocking his forehead into Zura’s nose.

“-EY!” Yells Zura, whose speaking faculties are now obstructed by the blood coming out of his nose.

Gintoki pries himself off of Zura’s face. “Serves you right, bastard! You-”

Gintoki is cut off by Zura’s fist smashing into the side of his face. Gintoki releases his hold on Zura’s collar. His hand- almost instantly- reaches around Zura’s head, grabs a fist full of Zura’s hair, and yanks.

Katsura freezes. Takasugi, halfway across the room, feels himself go very, very still. Gintoki stops and looks at the handful of black hair winding around his fingers. He raises his head slowly, meeting Zura’s stunned eyes.

“Ah,” Gintoki lets go of Zura’s hair, pulling his hand away slowly. “Shit. Sorry-”

The right hook that Katsura nails him with sends him flying almost to Takasugi’s feet.


	6. Wish

Katsura didn’t waste his time thinking about what he wanted. There were a lot of things he had to do, and between the house, and school, and training, he was too busy to worry about what he wished for. (In his empty rooms he did not want too much time to think.)

It took a lot less time, and was much easier, to figure out what he didn’t want.

He didn’t want to be surrounded by sneering idiots, so sadistic and self absorbed that they picked on those lower than them because they could, so wrapped up in their own pride that they’d throw it away to beat someone down for the crime of being more skilled than they are.

The realization had come to him when he’d spoken with Takasugi on the steps of the shrine, when their classmates had surrounded them (they had thought it would be nine against one, but they relished the chance to take Katsura down too) simply because Takasugi dared to use his skills and tarnished their names, because Takasugi was better than they were (because they thought Katsura less.) The realization that he didn’t want to share his space with people like them had struck him like Gintoki had struck their leader when he jumped down from the tree, and had joined Katsura and Takasugi without even asking their names.

Katsura also knew that he didn’t want an education that gave him nothing. He listened to his teachers at the academy, and he realized that every word was a parrot of something he’d already read. They may as well have been the diagrams in his books for all that they could teach him- and he prefered the diagrams, which didn’t stride through the classroom with a pompous air and speak of the villagers like they were worth as much as the floor under their feet.

So, he wanted… what?

He wanted a teacher who taught him, not drilled him on memory and philosophy and kendo steps that were illustrated crisp and clear next to their descriptions (a teacher like Shouyou, who challenged them to find their own answers before he read them anything out of a book). He wanted to learn, and he wanted to learn with people who didn’t throw away their pride with the first bruise on it (with people like Takasugi, who got back up and challenged themselves again and again until they could succeed with their own strength).

What he wanted was..?

“The Military Arts Academy’s biggest prodigy and bad boy are teaming up.” He says to Takasugi, glancing around the corner to look into the alley. Lantern light is just breaking around the wall of the alley- they’re coming, coming to arrest Shouyou. “We should be able to stall the officials.”

“Two students from a prestigious academy? Don’t make me laugh.”

Katsura's eyes widen as he recognizes the voice.

Gintoki steps into view, his hair the same color as the moonlight that hits the street all around him. He grins, his bokuto resting on his shoulder. “Don’t you mean the den of evil that’s training rebels to topple the government-

“The Shouka Sonjuku’s three bad boys?”

What he wished for-

He stands with Gintoki and Takasugi, his bokuto ready as the officials round the corner and come into sight. There’s five of them, full grown men armed with real blades, but he can’t imagine losing this fight, not with the three of them standing together.

“Sakata Gintoki, disciple of Yoshida Shouyou.”

“Katsura Kotaro, likewise.”

“Takasugi Shinsuke, likewise.”

What he wants is-

He remembers when Gintoki fixed him with a flat stare and told him that he could have as many personal battles as he wanted, that a general wasn’t something that he had to be alone. It’s a personal battle now, and he’ll fight it for himself and his-

Friends.

The three of them charge at the officials, when like a ghost, like magic, Shouyou-sensei sends the officials running. He reaches the three of them and knocks them on the head with force enough to send them chin deep into the earth.

“Welcome to Shouka Sonjuku,” he says with a smile.


	7. Surrender

“It’s your own fault,” Zura says, for what has to be the thirteenth time in fifteen minutes. He changes the rag on Gintoki’s forehead and swaps it for a fresh one. “Shouyou-sensei told you not to go on the pond.”

“Shut up.” Gintoki groans, trying to bury himself deeper into the blankets. He can barely breathe for his stuffed nose, and his head is pounding from the incessant chatter and his developing flu.

They were staying in an abandoned temple on their way between villages, Katsura and Takasugi’s hometown far behind them. There was a small pond in the temple’s courtyard, which had been covered in a deceptively thin layer of ice- as Gintoki had learned yesterday, when he pushed Takasugi out onto the middle of it, and the whole sheet had shattered underneath the three of them.

Zura manages to be silent for all of two minutes before he starts up again. “If you hadn’t pushed Takasugi-”

Zura was miraculously unscathed, damn him. He kneeled by Gintoki’s futon now, with his nose clear and his face unflushed. Gintoki bitterly thinks that he looks better than ever.

“You fell in too,” Gintoki grumbles, fed up with the noise. “Oi, why aren’t you sick? Is it really true that idiots don’t catch colds?”

Zura crosses his arms, “If that was true, you wouldn’t be sick.”

“Why are you singling me out?” Maybe if Gintoki could distract Zura, he’d get some peace- away from the damned wighead’s incessant nagging. “Takasugi’s sick too. Go bother him, jackass.”

Katsura crosses his arms and looks down at Gintoki, frowning. “Shouyou-sensei is with Takasugi right now. His flu is worse than yours. Sensei said he needed peace and quiet.”

Really, the hypocrisy is too much to take.

Gintoki pushes back the covers and sits up slowly, as fast as his aching head- it feels like it’s stuffed with cotton and beating drums- will let him.

“What are you doing Gintoki? You’re not supposed to-”

Gintoki grabs the front of Zura’s kimono and yanks, and the other boy lets out an undignified yelp as he flails and topples onto Gintoki. Gintoki pushes himself up and rolls over going boneless and pinning Zura to the floor like he’s just a lumpy, ungainly futon.

They settle in an awkward position. Gintoki’s half on Zura and half on the futon, and his comforter is leaving one arm and the great majority of his back exposed, but Zura’s too shocked to be talking, and silence is the greatest comfort.

For about ten seconds at least.

“Get off me!” Zura shoves at him, but Gintoki has ten pounds on him and he’s all dead weight. “Get off!”

“No. You didn’t want to get out, so now you have to stay,” Gintoki mumbles. He’s more uncomfortable than he was when Zura was nagging him- but now Zura’s uncomfortable too. 

The other boy is well and truly pinned, and no matter how he struggles to get out, he’s got no leverage. Gintoki surrenders to his exhaustion and rests his head on Zura’s bony sternum.

Zura writhes, trying to worm free. He pounds his fist against Gintoki’s back with his free hand. Gintoki pays no mind. “Get off of me! I’ll get sick too!”

“You should have thought about that before you started playing nursemaid, ah? Whenever you enter the sick room there’s always a risk- Oi! what was that for?!”

“Shut up! My knee was bent wrong.” Zura had shifted so his legs were under him, stabbing a bony knee directly into Gintoki’s ribs in the process.

“You did that on purpose, you bastard!” Gintoki yells, barely restraining a coughing fit, “Stop abusing your patients!”

“I’m not a bastard, I’m Katsura,” He responds. He squirms again, and this time, Gintoki catches a bony elbow in his upper arm. “Get off me and you won’t have this problem!”

“If I get off you, will you go away and stop nagging me?!”

“I wasn’t nagging you!”

“Yes you were, dumbass! I’m not getting off!”

Zura stops straining for escape and doesn’t respond. They lay like that, Gintoki’s head on Katsura’s chest, half covered by the comforter, for five minutes before the silence is broken again.

“Gintoki.”

“What?”

“If I get sick, I’ll murder you.”


	8. Guilt

Yesterday, when Sensei said good morning to Katsura, he had said, ‘Good morning Kotaro-kun,’ And Katsura had replied, ‘It’s not Kotaro, it’s Katsura.’ He blames this on Gintoki.


	9. Sleep

It’s one of the unappreciated, lesser known laws of the universe; watermelons always taste best in the summer, your sandals will get soaked no matter how carefully you step around puddles, and Katsura’s futon would always end up between Gintoki’s and Takasugi’s. It doesn’t matter if he’s the first to bed or the last, he always falls asleep with Gintoki to the right and Takasugi to the left (And wakes up with two idiots on top of him, fighting even in their sleep.)


	10. Scream

“Zura screams like a girl.” Takasugi said, breaking the three minute’s silence. “When you scare him.”

Gintoki looked up, still sullenly nursing the bump on his head. “Ah? Where the hell’d that come from?”

Takasugi shrugs and returns to staring at the wall, wiping at a trail of blood dripping from his nose.

Shoyou’s return to the room prevents Gintoki from demanding an explanation.

 

He starts to think about it constantly.

When Shoyou releases the pair of them, assigning Gintoki to clean the dojo and Takasugi to work in the garden, he thinks about it. “Zura screams like a girl when you scare him.”

When Zura walks into the dojo and grabs his shinai to practice, Gintoki thinks about it. “Zura screams like a girl when you scare him.”

At dinner, when Zura grabs a pork bun. At night, when they lay, the three of them, in a row on their futons. In the morning, when Takasugi and Zura shake him awake, calling him a lazy bastard, Gintoki thinks about it. “Zura screams like a girl when you scare him.”

He can’t trust it. That’s a valuable piece of information, prime blackmail material. It’s not something you impart to a guy who just tripped you into the tatami mats not ten minutes before. 

No, he can’t trust it. It’s a trap, it has to be.

But it fits, doesn’t it? Zura has girly hair and girly handwriting, soft, girly eyes and a girly tendency to tie his hakama too high. It makes sense, then, that he’d scream like a girl when he’s scared, right?

Right?

The thought wouldn't leave him alone. Gintoki had to know.

He crafts a simple plan. Really simple- Zura was more tactically inclined, Takasugi could be, Gintoki stopped caring about things that took an hour or more.

When Shoyou calls for lights out, Gintoki lays down with everyone else. His futon is to the right of Katsura’s, Katsura's on the right of Takasugi.

He slips under his comforter. He squirms, maneuvering his elbow underneath him so it digs into his hip uncomfortably. Shoyou extinguishes the lantern and leaves. The only light in the room is the moonlight spilling in from the paper doors, soft blue light cascading over the resting bodies of his classmates.

Forcing his eyes open and tapping his fingers, he stays awake for what feels like hours, (what’s probably not even forty five minutes). He looks over to his left, sees that Zura fell asleep face down on the pillow like he always does, his hair untied and his face towards Takasugi.

Zura shifts, turning his face towards Gintoki. His eyelashes cast soft shadows under his eyes, and his cheek is pressed against the pillow, pushing his mouth into a pout. A piece of his hair falls over his face and Gintoki’s stomach starts to feel fluttery. He has the sudden urge to start wringing his hands.

What the hell?

He shakes himself out of it- he has an objective, dammit. It wasn’t the time to get a stomachache.

He takes a deep breath. It’s a simple plan. He’ll go, reach over Zura and shake him awake. He’ll wake up, see Gintoki’s face in the low light, and flip out. When he screams, Gintoki will have material to tease him with for another four years at least. Easy.

Gintoki sits up, his gaze still pinned to the back of Zura’s head.

“What the hell are you doing?”

Gintoki nearly jumps out of his futon. Takasugi is levered up on one elbow, looking at him through bleary, half closed eyes.

“Nothing.” Gintoki shifts to face Takasugi and shoves his finger up his nose. “It’s late. Shouldn’t brats like you be sleeping?”

“I’m older than you,” Takasugi glares at him. The effect is ruined by the huge cowlick on the right side of his head. “Is this why you can’t get up in the morning? Because you spend all night staring at Zura sleeping?”

“No! What?!” Gintoki splutters. “Hell no! This is all your fau- I mean, I was just getting up to get a drink of water!”

Takasugi raises his eyebrows, then drops back to his futon. “Then why don't you go get one, creep.”

_ Shit shit shit. _ Gintoki climbs to his feet, mindful of Takasugi’s half closed eyes following him.  _ This wasn’t part of the plan! _

The hair on Gintoki’s neck bristles harder and harder every step he takes away from his warm, comfortable,  _ safe _ futon. The door looms like a guillotine in front of him. He turns back, and Takasugi has raised himself on his elbow again, and is watching him leave.

“Damn midget,” Gintoki mutters under his breath, so quietly even he can barely hear it in the silent room. “Why the hell was he awake? He’s ruining everything-”

He pulls open the door, as quietly as he can. He risks a glance back. Takasugi is still watching him.  _ Who’s the creep, oi?! _

Gintoki grits his teeth, and slips into the cold, dark, totally not ghost infested hallway. Forget scaring Zura, Gintoki’s going to get a glass of water and bring it back to pour on that obnoxious dickwad’s head.

The hallway’s never seemed longer than it does now as Gintoki walks to the kitchen. His footsteps, soft as they are, echo and bounce around the empty walls. He feels a pricking on the back of his neck, like someone’s watching him.

_ The kitchen the kitchen the kitchen THERE’S SOMEONE BEHIND ME- _

Raising his fists, he snaps his head around- for his gaze to meet an empty hallway. The walls are stained cold and blue from the night time, the only light coming in is the moonlight filtered through the slatted windows.

_ It’s fine it’s fine- damn that Takasugi- there’s no one here it’s fine. _

Gintoki creeps forward, his shoulders hunched up to his ears. He hums a few bars of the doraemon theme- the only few bars he knows, and tries to make it maybe twenty more feet to the kitchen.

“Hmm mmm hmm hmm mmhmm-”

Behind him, h e hears the soft clatter tap of someone closing a shoji door.

Without taking the time to think, Gintoki bolts the rest of the way to the kitchen, spinning around the doorway and flattening himself against the wall. His heart kicks in his chest like a rabbit. His humming picks up speed until he starts singing under his breath, his voice high and squeaky with nerves

“This sort a’ thing is good I wish icoulddoit,” Gintoki mutters as quietly as he can, his voice rising in pitch- and panic, “thatsortadreamthissortadreamihavemanyofthem-”

Footsteps. He hears them, soft, light and sure, coming down the hallway.

“-allofthemallofthemallofthemhegrantsmydreamswithamysteriouspocket-”

Gintoki scans the room frantically. The footsteps are definitely headed in his direction, advancing towards the kitchen like the dread that’s climbing over Gintoki’s consciousness. There, in the corner.

“Iwanttoflyfreelyinthesky-Bamboo Copter!-ah ah ah-”

Gintoki grabs the broom, holding the handle like a bokuto. The footsteps are halfway down the hall now.

“I love you very much, Doraemon! Homework hmm hmmm hm hm hm because that sort of thing is awful hmmm hmmm hmm hmm hm hm allofthemallofthemhehelpsmewithaconvenienttool-”

The footsteps are just outside of the kitchen. Gintoki spins into the doorway, a death grip on the handle of the broom and he sees it-

A ghost.

It’s definitely a ghost, with a pale kimono and long, dark hair casting straggling shadows over a pale face. Gintoki’s heart is beating so fast it feels like it’s stuttering to a stop in his chest.

“AAAAHHHH!” Gintoki brings the broom over his head with a battle cry. The ghost raises its hand.

And like a lightning strike, clocks Gintoki in the nose.

“OI!” Gintoki careens backwards, dropping the broom, barely staying on his feet. A fiery pain erupts in his face. He claps his hands protectively over his nose. _It hurts like hell!_

The ghost is silent for a moment.

“Gintoki?”

Slowly, he raises his head, looking up at the blurry phantom. He blinks stray tears of pain out of his eyes.

In the moonlight, it’s easy to mistake Zura as a ghost, with his washed out complexion and his hair, usually so neatly tied back, hanging in front of his face in a tangled curtain. He stares wide-eyed at Gintoki, his eyebrows furrowed. His foot is back in a defensive stance, and one of his fists is still raised to strike.

“You startled me! What the heck were you doing, lurking in the kitchen like that?!” Zura snaps, pushing his hair out of his face.

Gintoki stares at him flatly, one hand still protectively pressed to his face- he thinks he can feel the blood dripping onto his upper lip. No scream. Not even a yelp. Just a right hook that Gintoki’s going to be feeling for the rest of the week.

Takasugi is  _ dead. _ Gintoki’s going to kill him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This idea was from that one episode with Zura and the news caster, where the shinsengumi officer pops out of nowhere and Zura kicks him in the face. It's also meant to raise the question of how Takasugi found out about it in the first place.


	11. Time

“Hey, Zura.” Gintoki toes at a pebble on the ground.

The other boy is crouched on the road, his arms braced on his knees. He's silhouetted in the late afternoon light- it catches on him, golden. His hair spills over his shoulder, stray locks of his ponytail brushing over his face. He’s staring at something on the road. Gintoki can’t see his face- well, not much of it, but his shoulders are relaxed, slumped. He’s completely still. It’s almost shocking to Gintoki when he sees Zura’s ribs, just slightly, expand as he breathes.

“Oi, Zura!” Gintoki kicks the pebble, launching it at Zura. It hits him in the shoulder.

He staggers, whips his head around to face Gintoki. Irritation shrouds his face, until it’s gone, quick as it came. “It’s not Zura, it’s Katsura.”

He turns back to look at the road.

Gintoki ambles over, dropping down to a crouch beside him. “What are you doing, bastard?”

“I’m looking at something,” he says. “Which would be obvious, if you would just open your eyes.”

“Looking at what?” Gintoki presses.

“That.”

Zura points to a flower on the side of the road. It’s browning and dried up, probably already dead with the approach of winter.

“It’s just a dumb weed,” Gintoki notes.

“My family name is a kind of tree.” Zura’s voice has that soft tone it has sometimes, his  _ knowing _ voice- but not the  _ I-told-you-so _ voice that makes Gintoki want to deck the other boy. Hearing it makes Gintoki’s chest feels like it’s going concave- makes him want to drop everything and listen. “You know, a plant goes through its entire life-cycle, staying in one place the entire time. Wherever it's planted, with very few exceptions, that's where it will die. Most of them only live for about half the year, too. In fact, we mark the beginning of autumn with when they begin to die.”

Zura reaches out and touches the petals of the wildflower. “It’s pretty, isn’t it?” One of the petals falls off and flutters to the ground. He looks at it, contemplative. “They’re like clocks, how they live and die with the seasons- when they're supposed to. It's poetic. Beautiful.”

Gintoki looks at the browning leaves. “No. It’s not.”

Zura cocks his head to the side. He’s silent for a minute before he says softly, like he's not sure if Gintoki is supposed to hear it, “It reminds me of my grandmother.”

Gintoki looks at Zura. He looks weary, like he’ll wither and fall like the leaves on the flower in front of them. Gintoki studies his face, the way his lashes brush his cheeks when he blinks, how his face is as still as the blades of grass in front of them. They have no wind to move them.

He puts his palm on Zura’s shoulder. Zura jumps, turning his head to look at Gintoki, his eyes shocked-round like he's just coming out of a dream. Gintoki looks at his face for a moment then shoves, sending him tumbling into the dirt at the side of the road.

“Well, we aren’t staying in one place our whole lives.” Gintoki stands. “Get up, or Shoyou-sensei’s gonna move on without you.”

Zura glares up at him from the dirt and clambers to his feet, brushing the roadside dust off of his hakama. Gintoki doesn’t wait for him, just turns and walks down the road. Zura will catch up eventually.

Gintoki never really thought about the haiku's that Sensei told them to write, but he thinks that maybe if he did write one it would be about the real beautiful thing about plants: even at the end of winter some of them stay alive, even after they look like they've died and crumbled to skeletal remains. They just grow back, come back full force the next spring.

Trees are known for it.


End file.
